Disintegration
by MiyuTanemura
Summary: Natsu and Gray broke up due to unknown circumstances but they still care deeply for each other. Everyone at the Guild can see that but their stubbornness keeps them apart. When things get too dangerous, Lucy and Erza try to help their friends. Gray/Natsu


Disclaimer: Don't own anything but my small collection of mangas by Hiro Mashima. Yay!

**Disintegration**

A tense and uncomfortable silence settled upon the Guild.

Nobody said anything, nobody heard anything.

From where had been shouts and yells and the sound of things breaking, now only silence emerged.

It was a bit unsettling and unnerving.

The main room that usually was bustling with activity and loud voices had all the people at the tables looking at each other.

Lucy was sitting with Erza and they had been talking to Mirajane when the sound of yet another fight between two of the most irascible mages of the Guild broke out. When the silence settled they exchanged looks before Lucy decided to go and see what had happened. She was extending her hand to the door handle when the door flew open to reveal a pissed off Gray. She didn't say anything about the state of disarray of his clothes or about the nasty bruises or even about the swell in his left cheek.

He slammed the door and headed towards the exit, with a slight limp. All the eyes were on him at the moment. The heavy wooden door fell shut and all the eyes turned to the door that Lucy was, once again, about to open.

It fell open again with enough strength to hit the wall and make a dent in it. Lucy ended up looking straight at Natsu. He was also in pitiful state. Arms and legs with bloody scratches and he also had a swelling eye. His left hand was clutching at his right side.

"Natsu! Are you alright?" Lucy promptly went to help him and led him to the bar where she pushed him to sit down. "What happened?" she demanded, while she was thinking, deep inside, 'Boy, when they fight they mean business…'

Natsu, who had remained silent to this point (only stopping to glare at some of the others on the tables) hissed a bit when a pack of ice brushed lightly with his eye. "Nothing happened. I'm alright." He only mumbled these words before standing up and leaving the Guild without a second glance back.

"I hope everything's alright…" Lucy sat down and drank from the mug that Mirajane had thoughtfully placed in front of her.

"That was strange, that's for sure…" Erza was playing with the straw of her drink.

Shaking her head sadly, Mira couldn't help but mutter, "Somehow I feel that something's wrong."

With what could almost be called a collectible shrug, things slowly returned back to normal in the Guild and, as night advanced, they mostly forgot about what had happened. After all it wasn't such an uncommon occurrence.

The following morning, upon entering the Guild, Lucy was surprised by the shocked murmur that seemed to have seeped into every person.

When she asked Mirajane what had happened she was so shocked that the glass she was holding slipped through her unresponsive fingers, falling to the floor and crashed into a million of tiny shards.

She slammed her hands on the counter and braced herself.

"Are you serious?" she asked in a weak voice. At the other's grave nod she started shaking her head in denial. No. It wasn't possible. This had to be a joke of some kind, of the worse kind…

Natsu and Gray had broken up.

Two months had passed and only now things had calmed a bit.

Natsu was sitting with Lucy and Happy and they were having breakfast. It was a calm morning. Erza had just returned from a mission and she was just about to sit with her friends. In her hands a bowl of steamy food was succeeding in comforting her, just by feeling the warmth and delicious scent. She sat down and they were chatting in a relaxed manner – even if there was an underlying tension that was always there. Unfortunately nobody was about to address it…

After breakfast they remained at the same table, lazing around and talking some more. Natsu was trying to convince Lucy to go in a mission with him and Happy but, she had read the flier and wasn't looking forward to the work that it implied. And the pay wasn't even that much for the amount of work.

Natsu pouted, crossed his arms on the table and rested his head in them. He was about to open his mouth and retort when the doors of the Guild opened.

A single figure was outlined and silence blanketed the Guild. As the person started walking, slow and painfully, small gasps were erupting from the room.

Natsu straightened, his face adopting an instant concerned look that was promptly hid by a frown. He averted his eyes to the table top.

Gray stumbled into a stop, changing the hand that was pressed to his wounded side. He gasped for breath and rubbed his hand on his pant-leg, leaving a bloody smear. The tatters of his shirt that remained glued to his body were of a dark red.

Natsu looked back up but clenched his hand until the knuckles were white and his jaw was tightly set.

Sitting in front of him, Lucy watched apprehensively, this unsettling display of emotion that twisted a knot of concern within. It was true that things hadn't been the same since the break-up. And it was painful to see her friends break apart and not being able to do a single thing. She saw the barely suppressed rage flicker in the Salamander's eyes as he saw Elfman approach Gray and help him to the infirmary in one of the back rooms.

She jumped, startled, when Natsu hit the table angrily. A worried look was exchanged with Erza as Natsu got up and, without a word, headed to the exit. He paused to look at the floor. Lucy's and Erza's and half the Guild's eyes following the motion.

Lucy's eyes widened and her stomach churned at seeing the bloody trail, a hand clapping in front of her mouth instantly.

An indescribable mix of feelings whirled around Natsu before he turned back again and hurried away, shutting the door with a slam.

Grasping for her mug with slightly shaking hands, Lucy looked at Erza and petted Happy distractedly, getting some comfort in the action.

"This is completely ridiculous. They are both so stubborn that I don't think that it would even be possible to pound things into their heads by force." Erza muttered angrily.

"Erza, why are they behaving like this?" she turned bright eyes at her, "Can't they see that they're slowly destroying each other?"

Shaking her head sadly, Erza replied, "I don't know. It would be expected that they'd learned some lesson by now."

"But why are they reacting like this? Natsu has been behaving as if nothing had happened, only now he behaves in a more childish way and Gray… he has gone in mission after mission, not talking to anyone and, from what I heard, he has been acting recklessly." She drank from her mug. "I fear that something really bad may happen to him…"

Erza's eyes lit momentarily. "We have to open their eyes, and soon." She smiled mischievously.

"Do explain…" a hopeful glint appeared in Lucy's eyes.

"We'll have to-" Erza leaned to Lucy and they started talking in a conspiratorial way, throwing warning glances at Happy until he decided to cooperate too.

The next few days were almost like torture to Natsu. He wanted to go away, disappear from the Guild where he could face Gray or worse – find himself at the door of the room that he had borrowed at Mira's insistence. This proved to be easier said than done as he found himself standing in front of said door several times, unconsciously.

Every single time he shook his head and, growling in frustration, turned back and went down to the main hall.

Why did this have to be so fucking hard?

Come on! Why couldn't they cut him some slack? His life was difficult as it was, there was no need to worsen it!

At least, from what he had heard, Gray was much better now, patched up and almost in shape to go back. Not that it mattered to Natsu, no, he was way over him, doing perfectly and, when was his next mission? Oh right, Lucy had asked him to postpone his next missions because of… something…

Apparently she was teaming up with Erza on something as they could be seen discussing something at the table. Lately Mirajane and Levi had been pulled into the conversation, sheets with strange doodles shifting between their hands. The strange thing was, all of them instantly shut up and hid the papers the instant they saw him coming. It was unsettling to say the least and made him wonder if it didn't have anything to do with him.

He even had tried to spy their conversation one afternoon but Erza had caught him. The outcome hadn't been a pretty one and he now tried to know by other means.

He even tried to expose these conclusions to Happy, the flying cat quickly easing his mind from suspicion and assured that it was just girls' talk. Maybe they were preparing a surprise for him. Trusting his old friend, Natsu let the matter go and stopped paying attention to that prickling feeling that was constantly nagging at him, warning him that something was about to happen.

Until it happened.

One afternoon he had just arrived at the Guild to have an early dinner when Mirajane told him that Erza had an important matter to discuss with him, on the upper floor. He climbed the stairs and, letting his sense of smell guide him, he ended up in the aisle of guest rooms, lined by doors and with a large window at the end. Erza was standing by the window, looking at the last of the day, the sun slipping away and bathing the world in pinkish hues.

She seemed to snap out of her reverie and look at Natsu with strangely piercing eyes. And this wasn't even her usual piercing stare! What in the Horas' name was happening in here?

Distractedly he leaned on the wall opposite to her, his arms crossing in front of him as he leaned on the wood at his back. Erza didn't seem to be about to talk and a heavy silence fell around them, both looking at the other in an appraising manner. Then two voices sounded from somewhere – they were muffled and that must've been some kind of signal as Erza suddenly walked to Natsu and put her hands on his shoulders.

"I think this is for the best."

Her words confused Natsu who suddenly was pushed back and found himself falling. He hit the ground with a thud and – everything happened too fast – the next moment a pair of legs passed in front of him and the door was closed. Natsu ended up looking at the dark wood. From the outside the girls were talking to him.

"You won't leave the room until you talk and discuss things thoroughly."

"Yes, I don't want you out of that room until you settle all your things. Am I clear? Or else!" there was the loud sound of something being dragged and stopping in front of the door and a sense of dread rose and threatened to overtake Natsu. Something wasn't right. He knew that hall – too well, in fact – and if this was where he thought he was… well, he wanted to run from the place. Yeah, that summed it up, pretty much. At the sound of a throat being cleared Natsu closed his eyes, took a deep breath and turned back, ever so slowly.

There he was, the person that Natsu wanted – and didn't want – to see.

Gray looked much better since he had last seen him. No blood dripping from injuries. But he had several bandages over his torso and his left arm. When he took a step forward, the way he moved showed that there were also bandages on his legs. Hopefully the wounds wouldn't be too bad – Wait! What was he thinking?

His inner monologue was shut when Gray took another step and was now right in front of Natsu. Closer than they had been in what felt like years – not that he would admit that, of course.

Gray was looking at him with a neutral expression. That damned expression that always left him out, that cold mask that he had promised that wouldn't come in between them.

Natsu felt the urge to yell at him, demand an explanation to the reason to be left outside but, he remembered, he no longer had a right to it. They had parted ways and that was it.

However, there was an instant difference that appeared to have some sort of comprehension.

Then it downed on him. He couldn't read anything from Gray's expression but Gray could read everything from Natsu's. He had always told him, teased him, on how easy to read he was.

Gray had been seeing what he was feeling all along and this placed Natsu in a serious disadvantage.

Some of the aloofness seemed to recede from Gray's expression when he looked to his side and mumbled, "So, the girls want us to talk…"

"It would seem so…" Natsu looked at the floor, developing an unexpected interest for the wooden floorboards.

Gray went to sit on the chair in front of the desk. His stony expression coming back in, "You want to talk? So be it, talk."

Natsu looked at him, opening and closing his mouth but no sound emerging.

"Erm… You look much better since the last time I saw you." Natsu sat on the bed, managing to see Gray from the corner of his eye. When he didn't say anything Natsu continued, "How-how did you end up like that?"

"Nothing much. They trapped me and I had to get out of there." He said in a monotone.

"It wouldn't have happened if you were in a team." Natsu stated shyly.

"Doesn't matter. Having to look out for the others ends up being a hindrance. At the end of the day you can only count on yourself."

Natsu looked at Gray with shock. The other didn't notice because he was looking out the window.

Natsu was appalled. Who was this cold person? He was so different from the Gray he knew – even from the one with the mask. The bastard! It was as if he had receded, as if he never had had- Oh shit! And this was all Natsu's fault?

He had to solve this matter, he needed to bring _his_ Gray back! To hell with the rows and misunderstandings and rivalries.

He needed his Gray back because, he needed Gray. This time apart had been so difficult. He never knew how much he could miss fighting him, touching him, kissing him.

In frustration he got up and threw a small vase to the ground. "Damn it Gray! How could you be so stupid?" he shouted, looking at the pieces of china on the floor momentarily. Turning and looking at him in the eye, he continued, "How could you be so stubborn?"

Gray just looked at him, unfased. He was not about to rise to the bait. "I'm not stubborn." He replied, jaw set.

"Yes, you are! How could- I've seen you. I noticed how careless you got." He stomped so that he was towering over Gray, "You got careless and you went in missions of increasing difficulty – alone and without much rest. What, suddenly you got a death wish? Did the miserable cells in that puny brain of yours finally froze to death?" he punched the wall, "What?"

Gray got up, looking furious. His neutral mask slipping. "Why do you care? You were pretty clear when you said those things. So you don't have a say in what I do with my life!" Gray matched Natsu's stance, hands balled at his sides.

"I do have something to say! At least as your friend-"

"Ah! My friend? What friend wouldn't want to see me ever again? The friend that only extended his trust till a certain limit while you had my full trust? I was just doing you a favor!"

"Don't you see how hard it was for me to see you drag your beaten ass here time after time? Don't you see how painful-"

"In this you're not allowed to talk about pain. And not everything turns around you. You said what you thought. You got over me and that's final. Don't you dare coming here and say-"

"But I still care about you! You stupid-" Natsu pushed Gray against the wall with such force that the small painting of a landscape fell to the ground. "I always cared about you…" he pressed against Gray, pressing him against the wall. His trembling hand coming to caress Gray's cheek. He leaned into the touch, eyes closing. After all, he was starved for Natsu as much as Natsu was starved for him.

Then his eyes opened and, in the blink of an eye, he inversed their positions.

"You say all of that, you want to redeem yourself," he hissed into Natsu's ear, "then you're going to let me do that one thing. That way I'll believe in you." He dug his fingers on Natsu's sides and looked intensely at the black eyes that were staring at him.

With a shuddering exhale, Natsu closed his eyes and grabbed his scarf and pulled at it slowly, the cloth unveiling delicious skin that was waiting to be kissed, nibbled on and thoroughly marked. Natsu tilted his head to the side to give Gray more skin to mark, this simple gesture of submission giving Gray the permission to do everything he wanted.

Gray didn't spare even a second, his hands cupping Natsu's face and directing it so that they could crash their mouths together, feelings of pain, sorrow and passion mixing together so that the kiss was a little rough. Gray's teeth bit at Natsu's bottom lip, his tongue finding the way into the other's warm and welcoming cavern. The tongues glided against each other, entwined and the kiss became sloppy, with a bit more of saliva than usual. By then Natsu had an arm around Gray's shoulders pulling him in, his remaining free hand holding firmly on a fistful of black hair.

Gray, on the other hand, was pulling Natsu closer with an arm across the other's waist, the hand resting in that firm backside, at the same time that the remaining hand was holding at one shoulder.

They separated to gasp for much needed air, foreheads touching as they basically panted into each other's lips.

"Are you sure?" Gray _needed_ to know.

"Yes, I'm sure." He held onto Gray's arms, head coming to rest on Gray's shoulder.

They stood in this embrace until Gray had another idea. He slid his hands over Natsu's arms, stretching them and enlacing their fingers, one leg pressing between Natsu's thighs. He smirked when he felt the hardness pressing on his leg. When he moved his hips a little so that their groins aligned, he was delighted at hearing the moan that doing so ripped from Natsu's throat. He took that as an opportunity to plunder the fire mage's mouth once again. Releasing his hands he slid the vest down Natsu's shoulders. It fell to the floor.

After a while Natsu started getting a little restless, trying to move a bit but his movements were hindered by Gray who was still on top and inside of him. And the fact of having Gray _inside_ was making Natsu a bit uncomfortable. Sleepily, he tapped on the other's shoulder. When the head moved a little bit more he mumbled, "Get off. You're heavy."

Gray snorted but moved up, slipping slowly from the body underneath and feeling a bit sympathetic when he saw the small shudder that coursed through him. He did know how it felt.

Getting up, he scrambled around the room with an energy he didn't imagine he possessed, cleaning up, throwing the bedcover to the floor and lying down with Natsu again. Gods knew that he had missed this…

"We need to talk." Natsu's sleepy voice chimed in. He was lying on his side, back turned to Gray, what urged the latter to shuffle close and throw an arm around the Salamander's waist, adjusting the bedsheet.

"We can talk later." He breathed on his ear.

"But- we should-" Natsu gasped a little when Gray started kissing his shoulder.

"Don't worry. We'll talk in the morning." The ice mage took a deep breath of the scent. "We're not going anywhere." He made a pleased noise and nuzzled the back of Natsu's head. As he didn't have a reply, Gray began to fall asleep – the fact that the sun had set and left a comforting darkness also helping a little bit.

However he didn't catch the words when Natsu squeezed the hand on his waist and mumbled, "…missed you so much…love you…" before he also was pulled into the depths of slumber.

He was unable to see but a small smile came to Gray's lips.

Some time later, Lucy and Erza were by the door, the cabinet having been pulled away already. They hadn't heard anything from their friends ever since the first heated and irate words and now when they decided to go check on them, they were welcomed with silence.

"We need to know what happened." Lucy puffed her cheeks and crossed her arms, childishly.

"Well, there's no other way to do this so…" Erza opened the door very, very slowly.

They looked in and saw the two silhouettes entwined in the bed, only lit by the light coming from the outside.

Closing the door, they looked at each other and with bright grins they high-fived (despite the pink that brightened their cheekbones).

"Mission accomplished!"

"We're good at this…"

Laughing and in much lighter spirits they went down to rejoin the rest of their friends in the main room.

**A/N:** A new month, a new oneshot… Nah, this was just a story that has been plaguing me for a while and I decided to share. Hope you like it, even if it's not my usual way of writing the pairing.

It's still unbetaed so there're errors aplenty. I'll try to correct that soon enough.

Review?

**A/N2:** This chapter has been edited due to ffn's new directives. If you want to read the complete version, please go to my Livejournal. Thank you.


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